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The new deal of the White House and the Pentagon The parliamentary elections of 6 November 2018 deprived President Trump of his majority in the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party assumed that this would lead inevitably to his destitution. Of course, he had done nothing to deserve it, but a flood of hysteria swamped […]

There’s no ambiguity about it — whether Republicans or undemocratic Dems are in power. Their tactics at times differ, their objectives the same, seeking dominance over other nations, demanding they bow to Washington’s will or face its wrath.

Toughness is only language the US understands, how China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba respond to its acceptable actions, refusing to go along.

It’s a lesson Russia failed to internalize, falsely believing normalized relations with the US are possible ahead — despite over 100 years of hostility, except during WW II against Nazism and the end of the Reagan era.

Today bilateral relations are more dismal than during the height of Cold War differences, its most potentially dangerous time during the missiles of October when Jack Kennedy was president.

He later said he never had any intention of attacking Soviet Russia over the issue, a nation he favored rapprochement with, nuclear disarmament, and peace over war — why the CIA killed him.

Russia’s ineffective approach to the US shows in various ways, including by referring to its ruling authorities as “partners” and “colleagues.”

Republicans and undemocratic Dems consider Russia their mortal enemy, falsely accusing it of all sorts of things it had nothing to do with, imposing illegal sanctions on its officials and enterprises. That’s not how “partners” and “colleagues” treat each other.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump regime’s “real agenda” toward Iran is all about waging sanctions war for “enough economic distress” to get its ruling authorities to “buckle under the weight of popular discontent.”

A second claimed objective aims “to drive Iran’s top leaders back into a conversation with the US, perhaps with (DJT) himself.”

In other words, the Journal believes tough talk and actions on Iran can work the way as it got North Korea’s leader to hold two summits with Trump.

Cold hard reality tells a different story with both countries. Sanctions don’t work. Most often they’re counterproductive. In nations where they’re imposed, ordinary people hit hardest most often blame the government levying them, not their own.

True enough, North Korea came to the bargaining table with Trump, well aware of longstanding US hostility toward the country, knowing talks could be futile like other times before.

Nothing was accomplished between both countries because of unacceptable US demands. Nor is anything positive ahead likely.

Time and again, the US proves it can never be trusted. Even when becoming signatories to treaties, conventions, and agreements, most often it breaches them.

The Trump regime offered North Korea nothing but empty promises, decades of US hostility toward the country left unchanged, the same thing true for Iran.

The US wants both countries, and all other sovereign independent ones co-opted as client states, demanding they subordinate their sovereignty to US interests, polar opposite what dealmaking the way it should be is all about, why Iran wants no part of talks with Trump or other US officials.

The Journal’s premises are wrong. The harder the Trump regime comes down on Iran, the more ordinary Iranians despise the US, supporting their government, not opposing it.

The same holds for its ruling authorities, wanting no part of dealing with a regime it can’t trust.

Russia foolishly thinks diplomatic outreach to the US can resolve differences, even though the approach when tried fails time and again.

Most recently, Iran experienced US duplicity by Trump’s illegal JCPOA pullout — on top of 40 years of hostility toward its government and people. For Russia, it was DJT’s abandonment of the INF Treaty — each action based on Big Lies.

There’s no prospect whatever for normalized US relations with nations it doesn’t control. Polar opposite it true, going all out to force their compliance with US demands — by war by other means, the hot alternative, and/or other hostile actions.

Retired US Army Colonel/former chief of staff to Colin Powell whensecretary of state Lawrence Wilkerson believes Trump regime tough tactics against China could lead to war, and not just over trade differences.

Both countries are world’s apart on political, economic, financial, trade, and military issues, Wilkerson saying US confrontation with China is all about feeding the military, industrial, security complex’s insatiable appetite for near-unlimited funding.

The same goes for Russia, Iran and other nations the US falsely calls threats to its national security, a sure way to get billions more dollars from Congress for offense on the phony pretext of protecting national security.

What mostly scares the Pentagon and industrial/security complex is a peace dividend, why enemies are invented when none exist.

They’ve been none since WW II ended, so they’re manufactured to assure endless wars, peace treated as a threat to national security.

It’s why the global war OF terror, not on it, was created, major media playing a lead role in perpetuating the myth of barbarians at the gate threatening the US.

Americans are easy marks to be fooled, no matter how many times they were duped before, believing rubbish pounded into their minds by the power of state and media propaganda — the latter acting as press agents for powerful interests against the general welfare.

Claims by Trump regime hardliners about an Iranian threat lack credibility. No evidence suggests the Islamic Republic threatens any nations — not the US, Israel, its imperial partners, or any others.

Following a closed-door Tuesday congressional briefing on the Islamic Republic, Pompeo slammed Iranian “malign activity” that doesn’t exist, nor “40 years of terrorist activity — how the US and its imperial partners operate, not Tehran.

Trump’s acting war secretary Patrick Shanahan turned truth on its head, claiming “we received credible intelligence about threats to our interests in the Middle East and to American forces (sic)” by Iran, adding:

“That intelligence has borne out in attacks (sic), and I would say it’s also deterred attacks (sic). We have deterred attacks based on our re-posturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces (sic).”

“It is clear that over the last several weeks Iran has attacked pipelines and ships of other nations (sic) and created threat streams against American interests in Iraq (sic),” adding:

“If the Iranian threats against American personnel and interests are activated, we must deliver an overwhelming military response.”

Congressional briefings on Monday and Tuesday failed to convince Dems. Senator Chris Murphy said the following:

“I’m listening to Republicans twist the Iran intel to make it sound like Iran is taking unprovoked, offensive measures against the US and our allies,” adding:

“I’ve read the (same) intel, and let me be clear: That’s not what the intel says.” There’s nothing in it about an Iranian threat, just the opposite, indicating no Iranian threat exists.

Rep. Ruben Gallego made similar remarks, saying: “Lindsey and I get the same intel. That is not what is being said. This is total information bias to draw the conclusion he wants for himself and the media.”

Rep. Adam Smith said “(w)e still don’t know what the (Trump’s) objectives are,” adding he “does not anticipate” military action against Iran,” adding:

“What our ‘maximum pressure’ campaign has done in terms of achieving our objections, I have not seen.”

Speaker Pelosi said the White House has “no business” moving toward confrontation with Iran without congressional approval, adding:

“We have to avoid any war with Iran…The very idea that they would say that they would use the authorization of the use of military force that is 18 years old is not appropriate in terms of its scope, its geography, its timing for any actions they might take.”

Ranking Dem Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Bob Menendez said “Congress has not authorized war with Iran.” The White House has not provided any information to this committee on the intelligence behind their” their accusations against Tehran.

Former senior State Department official involved in negotiating the JCPOA Wendy Sherman warned against making reckless accusations against Iran, undermining the credibility of its claimants.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger called Trump regime remarks about Iran “deeply troubling.” House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff said he wants to know what Trump’s “strategy is…to keep us out of war” with Iran.

For weeks, Trump regime officials failed to provide evidence of Iranian “malign activities” or threats to US or Israeli regional interests.

The claim about Iran intending to attack US forces is utter rubbish. Not a shred of evidence supports it. What possible benefit could Iran get by taking this action — with everything to lose and nothing to gain by going this far.

Weeks earlier, John Bolton falsely accused Iran of “troubling and escalatory” activities. At the time, a fake news NYT report claimed “intelligence (shows) Iran or its proxies were preparing to attack American troops in Iraq and Syria,” citing unnamed Trump regime officials — no evidence cited because none exists.

In early May, citing unnamed Trump regime officials, NBC News claimed intelligence showed Iran and/or its “proxies…could go after American military targets in the region,” adding:

In mid May, the NYT falsely claimed “communication intercepts and imagery indicated that Iran was building up its proxy forces’ readiness to fight” — again no evidence presented. Accusations and allegations without it are baseless.

Last week, the Pentagon put its forces in Iraq on high alert over a nonexistent Iranian threat. The State Department ordered all non-emergency personnel to depart the country.

Iraqi officials said they’re unaware of any threat to US or other foreign personnel from Iran. UK General Chris Ghika, Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve deputy commander, expressed a similar view, saying:

“There’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces” in Iraq or regionally. “We monitor them along with a whole range of others because that’s the environment we’re in. If the threat level…go(es) up then we’ll raise our force protection measures accordingly,” adding:

“As of now, “coalition forces observed no change in (the posture of Iran and its allies) since the recent exchange between the US and (Tehran), and we hope and expect (this) will continue…We don’t see an increased threat from them at this stage” because there is none.

A CENTCOM statement shot back, repeating the falsified claim of an Iranian threat without providing a shred of evidence proving it.

If a legitimate Iranian threat existed, the US and its “coalition” partners would agree, not disagree on the issue.

Germany’s Defense Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff agreed with Ghika, saying “there is no concrete threat” from Iran to the US or its regional allies.

Claims about Iranian responsibility for sabotage to Saudi and UAE tankers, as well as against Saudi pumping stations, were and remain willful disinformation.

The Trump regime is waging war on Iran by other means, aiming to make its economy scream through harsh illegal sanctions and other hostile actions.

Its plan to drive Iranian oil exports to zero is doomed to fail. China remains a key buyer, in April purchasing about 800,000 barrels a day of Iranian crude, according to customs data.

Its Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corp invested billions of dollars in Iran’s oil fields, recouping their investment by importing large amounts of Iranian oil monthly, what’s highly unlikely to stop.

Its Foreign Ministry denounced US anti-Iranian actions. Both countries maintain normal political, economic, and trade relations. The same goes for Russia, Turkey and other nations.

War winds are blowing way short of gale force. Going this far against Iran is opposed by the world community and leading Dems. Even some establishment media are skeptical in recent articles and commentaries.

The usually hawkish Washington Post raised concerns, saying “war with Iran would be the mother of all quagmires.”

“A conflict with Iran would not be like the Iraq War. It would be worse…Trump is barreling toward war with Iran. Congress must act to stop him…The Iran threat is being exaggerated by GOP hawks.”

A NYT opinion piece headlined: “Don’t Fight Iran.” A separate one headlined: “How to Stop the March to War With Iran.”

Last Friday, the Times headlined: “War With Iran? Count US Out, Europe Says.” In its latest edition, the Times said Trump officials haven’t convinced skeptical Dems about supporting war on Iran.

US President Donald Trump no longer has any cards to wave in the face of Iran nor any grounds for negotiation. He can only resort to more economic sanctions and wait by the phone for a call from Iran, unlikely in view of Iran’s clear decision to reject any negotiations for the time being. Humanitarian […]

by Finian Cunningham Writer, Dandelion Salad East Africa Crossposted from Sputnik, May 16, 2019 May 20, 2019 To say the US conducts “foreign policy” is patently a misnomer. US policy is nothing short of low-intensity warfare against the whole planet. Its “foreign policy” is nothing more than a continuous program of psychological operations.

In the 1960s, the United States had an authentic broad based peace movement that sprang from opposition to the War in Vietnam. Motives varied; fear of the draft, revulsion for the US strategy that was based on increasing enemy deaths, and general youthful rebellion probably all played a part. Yet by 1970, years before the end of the war, the anti war movement was in disarray. This paper addresses some of the reasons the movement was never able to capitalize on its support or to form a broad based Left anti war party. In fact, some remnants of the rancorous movement can be seen now in the US’ deeply divided politics.

Long term American involvement in Vietnam escalated after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave President Johnson the power to wage war. As the war expanded in 1965, the fledgling anti war movement focused on ending US involvement in Vietnam. In his history of the anti war movement of which he was part, Bill Zimmerman writes that at first the movement adopted “two strategic goals: to give activists enough knowledge about Vietnam to be able to draw others into action, and to normalize opposition, since many Americans were hesitant to oppose their own country in a time of war.”

By 1967 the costs of the war were increasingly evident. As death tolls rose, the anti war movement grew and its stated goals evolved into a plan to build a mass movement and convert it into a political force. That year there were a number of large anti war demonstrations including 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial and 500,000 in New York.

As the war dragged on, it began to seem that although the US military could level a city, it was not equipped to win a limited war on foreign turf. Perhaps for this or other reasons in 1967 much of the anti war movement adopted a frankly anti American posture. According to Bill Zimmerman: “Our strategy, less coherent than in earlier stages, was to force an end to the war by creating instability, chaos and disruption at home.”

This shift can be seen in the changes in one of the largest anti war groups, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SDS began in 1960 as a Leftist education and civil rights group that by 1965 had taken on a leadership role in the anti war movement. In 1968, SDS gained a large number of new members following North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive whose success came as a shock to many Americans who had been repeatedly informed that the communists’ resolve and resources were crumbling. Even the ordinarily prosaic newscaster Walter Cronkite remarked, “to say that we are mired in stalemate is the only reasonable, yet unsatisfactory conclusion.”

At its peak, in 1969, SDS had over 100,000 members and its actions made national news. Many of the members who had joined in 1968-9 were anti war, but not necessarily radical or Leftist, and tended to be from the south and the midwest. They were largely ignorant of and disinterested in the Left and its history. As Kirkpatrick Sale writes in his exhaustive history of the SDS: “They were non-Jewish, nonintellectual, nonurban, from a nonprofessional class, and often without any family tradition of political involvement, much less radicalism.”

With the influx of working class members, SDS, always a tumultuous organization, entered a period of destructive internal turmoil and battles for leadership that pitted the ‘old guard’ intellectual Leftists who fought to adopt radical policies against the ‘new guard’ who were more interested in demonstrations to end the war.

Steve Weissman, a veteran of the old guard, later regretted that the SDS had “underestimat[ed] … the importance of the anti war movement and lost the chance to create a permanent political force in America.” By failing to use the anti war movement for recruitment and education and peckishly insisting on increasingly far Left political positions, the SDS lost a chance to build an American left, one that included not only intellectuals and students but other strata of America as well.

The Yippies, formed at the end of 1967 by Abbie Hoffman and a few others, were a publicity hungry anti war group whose principal weapon was the public mockery of institutions. Famed Yippie actions included an “exorcism” and attempted levitation of the Pentagon and the guerrilla theater of Abbie Hoffman and other Yippies who dropped hundreds of dollar bills onto the New York Stock Exchange, effectively closing the floor as stockbrokers scrambled for the money. These well publicized comedic acts were deliberately intended to undermine the institutions they attacked.

Yippie activism captured perfectly the chaotic final years of the “movement,” as the New Left subsided into factionalism and confusion over political objectives.

Their antics also contributed to the public’s widely held view that the anti war movement was too countercultural, too radical.

In 1969 the deep divisions in SDS resulted in a convention that was so acrimonious that it “could hardly even agree upon a time to adjourn, much less an organization for revolution.” SDS broke into two main factions, the Progressive Labor Party and the Weathermen, a self proclaimed radical group dedicated to fighting for the overthrow of American capitalism.

The Weathermen’s first declaration was that “the job of white Americans is to do anything they can in support of [revolutionary] struggles.” Members of Weathermen contended that any efforts at organizing whites against their own perceived oppression were “attempts by whites to carve out even more privilege than they already derive from the imperialist nexus.” This sounds like the seeds of the contempt that the former anti war candidate, Hillary Clinton, showed unemployed coal miners and steel workers.

The white, mostly bourgeois, Weathermen found that the rest of the anti war movement failed to follow them. Despite their dwindling popularity, they somehow imagined that the urban communes they set up would become bases for organizing the would-be rank and file of the revolution, but predictably, they failed to rouse the proletariat.

Zimmerman, who came to view the Weathermen with contempt, believed that in order to make their movement grow they “had to make it easy for people to join us, not require them to carry foreign flags, risk arrest or adapt a militant posture toward a government many still considered their own.”

But the Weathermen were focused on demanding loyalty to itself. New members were subjected to intense initiation rituals. Mass orgies entitled “smash monogamy” were scheduled with the intent of making the relationship with the group the only one that mattered.

With revolution rather than peace as its goal, the Weathermen turned to terrorism. In 1969, the Weathermen issued a well-publicized call for a “fight the pigs” event in Chicago that the press dubbed “Days of Rage.” Two days prior to the protests, the group bombed the Haymarket Police statue. But the expected mobs of protestors failed to materialize. A crowd of about 100 worked diligently to create chaos, but managed only to cause property damage and get arrested.

Frustrated, the Weathermen became increasingly violent. They built bombs to detonate at the sites of their purported oppressors. In March, 1970, a bomb meant for a dance at a nearby military base went off prematurely, blowing up their Greenwich Village town house, killing three and injuring two. At the time two additional bombs with 44 sticks of dynamite were defused with information provided by an undercover agent. The group ultimately set off about 25 bombs in various locations, including a nail bomb that killed a policeman. Historian Harvey Klehr writes that “the only reason they were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence.”

In September 1970, the Weathermen robbed a National Guard armory in Massachusetts stealing weapons and ammunition before setting fire to the armory. They used these weapons in a bank robbery during which they shot a police officer in the back. Three others were killed in a separate bank robbery.

Although the Weathermen diverted much of the anti war movement’s leadership, demonstrations against the war continued, albeit on a more sporadic and spontaneous basis. In 1969, following the news of the1968 My Lai Massacre of 347 civilians, a broad based nationwide one day moratorium drew 500,000.

Then in 1970, the invasion and bombing of Cambodia brought about large, violent and disorganized campus protests that resulted in the National Guard shooting into crowds of protestors, causing the deaths of 4 students at Kent State University and 2 at Jackson State University. Then again in 1971, demonstrations flared up after news broke of the invasion of Laos.

In part, organized demonstrations subsided in the wake of the departure of their far left organizers, and in part the movement lost its impetus when President Nixon and his defense Secretary, Melvin Laird, began to implement ‘Vietnamization,’ that is, the policy of transferring military operations from American troops to the South Vietnamese. Nixon gradually reduced the number of Americans in Vietnam until direct military involvement ended in 1973.

But the Weathermen remained energized throughout this period. They convened a ‘war council’ in 1970 that issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the US government.The council ended with a speech by John Jacobs who condemned the “pacifism” of white middle-class American youth (of which, of course, he was one). And declared that: “We’re against everything that’s ‘good and decent’ in honky America,…We will burn and loot and destroy.” The anti-White hatred reflected in Jacobs’ remarks was a central theme of the council. The Weathermen even debated whether killing White babies was a salutary revolutionary act.

The generally sympathetic documentary, “The Weather Underground” (the group’s name changed when their lawlessness forced them underground), portrays Weather members who put their lives on the line for peace and to oppose racism and who saw themselves as joining Black people and the Vietnamese in revolution. The Black Panthers, whose communal living facilities were dedicated to providing food and services to Black neighborhoods, shunned the Weathermen, calling the group’s violence “stupid and unnecessary.”

Brian Flanagan, a rare working class member of the Weather Underground, and alone among the former members interviewed in the Documentary, compared the Weathermen to Islamist terrorists and to Timothy McVeigh, noting that all shared the conviction that their own knowledge of what was right for society entitled them to break laws, to kill, to engage in terrorism. “When you feel that you have right on your side,” he said, “you can do some pretty horrific things.” Others interviewed in the Documentary remain unapologetic, and do not seem to see that their actions failed to inspire political change or even to help bring an end to the war. Bill Ayers, one of the group’s “rich kid radicals” said in a 2001interview, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Many in this movement that had superseded the anti war movement and transformed it into a divisive, patronizing, violent, disruptive force were Jewish. Why? Mark Rudd former leader of SDS at Columbia University and of the Weather Underground, addressed this question in a later essay. As he explains, although he was a third generation American, he grew up in an insular world where his “family carried the Jewish ghettos of Newark and Elizabeth with them to the suburbs.” He writes that his family was far from “assimilated, if that means replacing a Jewish identity with an American one.”

Rudd’s explanation for his political alienation is instructive. “As a child I never fell for the seduction of patriotism. It seemed so arbitrary, who’s an American and who’s not. If my relatives hadn’t emigrated, who would I be? Since I was also at core an idealist and a utopian—another Jewish tradition?—I wanted to skip all that obviously stupid and dangerous stuff that gave rise to wars and racism.”

This is an astounding statement. He views being an American as the arbitrary result of immigration (although immigration was a purposeful event) and his Jewishness as an irreducible and positive trait. Then after speaking of the racism of his family (they moved out when Black families moved into their Newark neighborhood) he sees patriotism, a sentiment that presumably embraces all Americans including Blacks, as racist and treats his own membership in an insular racial group as “idealist and utopian.”

When Rudd entered Columbia he joined SDS where all of his mentors and friends, and indeed, most of the group, were Jewish. Rudd recalls many conversations with his Jewish comrades but never a conversation in which they “discussed the fact that so many of us were Jewish. This glaring lack alone might serve as a clue to what we were up to: by being radicals we thought we could escape our Jewishness. Left-wing radicalism was internationalist, not narrow nationalist; it favored the oppressed and the workers, not the privileged and elites, which our families were striving toward.”

While Rudd may have wanted to escape his identity and become one with the ‘workers,’ it seems that the workers had no interest in his revolutionary politics. Gilad Atzmon points out in ‘Being In Time,’ that when ‘revolutionary’ Jews went to Spain to join the Civil War, they found themselves in an International Brigade that was 1/4 Jewish and Yiddish was the lingua franca. While they wanted, as Rudd did, to escape their identity and join the proletariat, they found themselves in a “Jewish ghetto, fighting Spanish patriots.” They might have identified with the working class, but they were not a part of that class. Atzmon explains, “[t]he Red Jews who traveled to Spain ended up fighting in Jewish legions because ID politics and Left-orientation are largely a Jewish intellectual domain that is actually quite foreign to working people.”

Then, as if to illustrate his confusion, in Rudd’s next paragraph he switches to seeing the ‘revolution’ not as an escape from his identity but as an affirmation of it, stating: “Identifying with the oppressed seemed to me at Columbia and since a natural Jewish value. What outraged me and my comrades so much about Columbia, along with its hypocrisy, was that despite the large number of Jewish students the University had “the air of genteel civility. Or should I say gentile?”

Here is the part of the anti war movement that is in complete rebellion against all that is ‘goyim.’ And yet it is Archie Bunker who we hold out as a racist. But even the fictional ‘racist’ Archie didn’t leave his home when a Black family moved next door as Rudd’s family had. Atzmon notes that ‘All in the Family’ was itself subversive of working class values. Beginning in 1971 we watched Archie railing against his son-in-law who represented what we now call ‘political correctness.’ Our universal denigration of Archie became a part of our adoption of identity politics, that eschews bigotry yet divides society into groups based on inherited characteristics.

Rudd’s explanations for why so many in the radical anti war movement were Jewish seems to me to be incomplete. The movement never was ‘internationalist,’ as it failed to convince the working class to join nor did the movement help Rudd escape his Jewish identity, he consistently identified as Jewish and found much to criticize about goyim. There are a few other possible motives that might have contributed to the phenomenon he addresses.

First, the Jews were the vast majority of the intellectuals of the movement. By adopting radical politics that were frankly anti American the Jews (in the movement) were able to differentiate themselves and escape the company of the seemingly unwelcome ‘middle Americans’ (goyim). Instead they formed an elitist apparatus within the so-called radical left.

George Tyler writes in “Weather Underground:Driving down a Dead End Street,” “Many of the Weather Underground leaders are sons and daughters of wealthy families – prominent corporation executives, lawyers, etc. …The arrogance, elitism and impatience stemming from their class background was reflected in their politics.” Much as they claimed proletarian values, these SDS leaders were unable to compromise or work with their working class brethren. Their contempt for others is not unlike the latter day critique of the ‘basket of deplorables.’

In fact, some former members of SDS saw the Weathermen’s violence and attacks on the middle class as deliberately designed to destroy the anti war movement. Although perhaps not intentional, it was at a minimum predictable that the Weather Underground’s actions would be repellent to most.

Also, and perhaps relevant, the radical split off and effective weakening of the anti war movement occurred after 1967, the year of the Six Day War after which a victorious Israel was viewed with pride by many diaspora Jews. The radical students seeking the oppressed to represent might well instead have chosen the Palestinians who had been uprooted by the Jewish state. Was some of their anger at America transferred from embarrassment at the land grab by the Israelis and the creation of thousands more refugees? Or instead, did they sympathize with Israel and feel themselves even stronger when represented by a victorious state? In any case, these radicals who identified as Jewish were more interested in ‘fixing’ the United States than in ‘fixing’ Israel.

Whatever the motivation, it was the intellectual and largely Jewish members of SDS who formed the Weathermen whose violence kneecapped the anti war movement. While they saw those who did not join them as ‘complicit’ in ‘America’s crimes,’ they were at least as complicit in that they accomplished nothing except to hurt the anti war movement by association.

However upset the Weathermen claimed to have been by the millions of deaths in Vietnam, even today most show no regret for the deaths they caused. In listening to them it is clear that there never was an achievable goal in their calls for a total revolution without a map. Atzmon points out that, “[t]hey didn’t want to liberate America, they wanted to liberate themselves from themselves by being themselves. It didn’t work very well.”

In the years since, many of the Weathermen have emerged from hiding, and have as Larry Grathwohl, writes in his memoir of his time as an undercover agent, “pulled off [one of] their most audacious feats: they negotiated a return to society, avoided legal consequences for their most serious crimes, and rose to influential positions in academia and politics – all without renouncing their anti-American ideology or apologizing for the acts of terrorism they committed against ordinary Americans.”

Sale concludes his history of the SDS narrative by pointing out SDS’ ‘salutary’ long term effects. “SDS taught the mechanics of political organizing and protest to an activist segment of the student population and restored the legitimacy of mass dissent to the national scene, leading eventually to such direct political consequences as liberalized laws (with respect, for example, to abortion, marijuana, homosexuality, community control, and the rights of blacks, women, and the young), the reorganization of the Democratic Party and the nomination of George McGovern, and the extension of suffrage to eighteen-year-olds.”

Perhaps it is the residue of the elitism of the SDS that has left the Democratic Party alienated from its former working class base.

Since Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuela’s interim president, rhetoric emanating from Washington has grown increasingly familiar. It echoes the bombastic & hollow humanitarian-crisis type of war propaganda which has been used repeatedly in resource-rich nations, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria. And now we’re seeing it […]